


The Devil is Out to Play

by XWingAce



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Deckerstar Exchange, Gen, Halloween, Trick or Treating, Wings, bullies getting a comeuppance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-15 22:56:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21260999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/XWingAce/pseuds/XWingAce
Summary: Lucifer has promised to take Trixie Trick-or-Treating. He gets tricked, and gets to play a trick of his own.





	The Devil is Out to Play

**Author's Note:**

  * For [VeryImportantDemon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VeryImportantDemon/gifts).

> Written for the 2019 Bat Out of Hell Lucifer fic exchange, for breakfastfoodclub/VeryImportantDemon.
> 
> They prompted me with  
1/ Lucifer’s Halloween costume just being his wings! Maybe taking Trixie treat or treating. and / or  
2/ “I’ll take care of you.” “It’s rotten work.” “Not to me. Not if it’s you.” From Orestes. 
> 
> I couldn't do too much with the second prompt but hopefully the first makes up for it. And I just managed to squeak it in on Halloween :) Happy Halloween!
> 
> This story is set after or during S5, but no spoilers whatsoever. It's mostly so Trixie's age lines up.

It started with a simple request.

"I've got a favour to ask."

"Whatever you want Detective, you have but to ask. If I can give it, it's yours."

"This isn't for me, though."

"Oh?"

"Halloween is coming up. And Trixie _really_ wanted you to take her trick-or-treating this year."

"You mean for me to spend the evening surrounded by overstimulated children in makeshift disguises, dodging sticky fingers and collecting low-quality candy? "

Chloe's smile reached her eyes, but she kept a straight face, otherwise. "It's rotten work, I know."

"If it's for your sake, Detective, it will be my pleasure. Should I provide my own costume?"

"Trixie had some ideas about that. You should ask her." Her smile faded and she put a hand on his arm. "But Lucifer, please know you don't have to do _anything_ she asks. Only if you want to do it." 

"I'm sure I'll be fine, Detective."

\--

That brought Lucifer to the current predicament. He had arrived dressed in a suit that should be able to withstand at least a reasonable amount of sticky fingers. If it couldn't it wouldn't hurt too much to throw out. If all else failed he could claim to be James Bond.

He was greeted by the Detective's spawn in cardboard armor. Which was not quite what he'd been led to expect. Maze's stories about the child's selections for previous Halloweens had referenced much more modern occupations. President of Mars, Veterinarian and Astronaut. Knight seemed… less ambitious, somehow.

"So who are you supposed to be?"

"Joan of Arc! We read about her in school."

"Really." Well, schools had to teach _something_ Lucifer supposed. He had never encountered the young lady, a rarity in his business – even most saints were no strangers to him. But he was well enough aware of the stories around her. "And the reason you chose to dress as the maid of Orleáns this year?"

"Well, she was a general, and a knight, and that's just cool. But also…" The child cocked her head at him, a calculating look in her eye. "She was burned as a witch for making deals with the Devil."

That was an odd tack to take. "And you thought that…"

"You could put on your real face! It'd be so cool!"

Ah. That was how the urchin was going to play this. A cheap ploy to trick him into revealing his darker side to her. Why anyone would _want_ that was a mystery. But then so were children – the Detective's more so than others. And Lucifer wasn't going to fall for it.

(It wasn't his _real_ face. It hadn't been for a long time, although it had taken Lucifer almost as long to realize that fact. That didn't mean he couldn't still play the part when he wanted to. Which wasn't now.) "We want to go trick-or-treating, yes? We don't want to scare everyone into closing their doors."

That didn't seem to convince the urchin. "Maze does," she said, shrugging. "People think she's got a cool mask."

"Mazikeen's face is quite impressive, indeed." Lucifer nodded. "There is still a difference between her demonic visage and what you are planning to subject the neighbourhood to. No, child." 

A pout was starting to form. He covered further. "Besides, although Jeanne D'Arc was convicted of consorting with the Devil, the retrial acquitted her." He sank to his haunches so he could whisper to the child, "and I never met her."

The girl's eyes widened, the pout gone. "Really?" She bit her lip, trying to contain a smile. "I _did_ have another idea." She took his hand and tugged toward her bedroom. "Come on, I've got the costume in here."

There was indeed a costume laid out on the bed. It was surprisingly …minimalistic.

"Did you consult your mother on this?" Lucifer asked as he held up the main component that the Spawn had intended for his costume. "This is a bedsheet."

The girl shook her head, making her braided pigtails swing. "It's a toga!"

Lucifer took a rough measurement of the rectangle of cotton – a bedsheet indeed. "If this were a toga, child, it would be at least four times as big." It would also have been made of wool and still require an undertunic and loincloth. As it was, it would be fine for an orgy or a costume party like the ones he used to throw at Lux, but not streetwear in late autumn. Even then, Lucifer would have preferred a good quality linen. 

He also caught sight of the other items laid out on the bedspread. A tinsel crown and a vaguely heart-shaped wad of feathery fluff that looked like it might fit the girl proposing it as a costume, not him. He had a sneaking suspicion where this was headed, but all in all, the impression of the costume was… "Did you want me to play Cupid, to put me in a tunic like this? I can assure you Cupid had nothing whatsoever to do with the Anglo-French wars."

That earned him a frown from the spawn. "Don't Angels wear togas?" Her frown faded and she gestured at the bedsheet. "If you didn't want to be the Devil, I thought you might want to be an Angel. They told us Joan was visited by an Angel." She directed hopeful eyes up at him. "Please? Don't you like the costume?"

Lucifer opened his mouth to protest but paused. The Detective had given him permission to refuse the child's requests and refuse he would – but he _had_ agreed to do this and he didn't _want_ to go as 007 on a budget. Besides, she was giving him an option that was… not entirely disagreeable. 

He shook his head. "This won't do for a costume, child. However, I _will_ play the Angel role if that is what you desire." He took a few steps backward, to create some space around him. "As for costume," He rolled his shoulders and let his wings unfurl. "What do you think about this?"

The girl's eyes widened and he was rewarded with a giant, open-mouthed smile. "Whoa! That is so much better than any costume!"

"Less anachronistic than a toga, too. They were about a thousand years out of date by the Middle Ages. Whereas a tuxedo's only about four hundred years too early." And if the stories about _which_ Angel had visited Joan of Arc were true, the resemblance could be closer than the child would ever realise. But that was perhaps giving too much weight to rumour.

"Uhuh," the child barely acknowledged his comment. She was still smiling, but she was starting to bounce around – never a good sign. "Can we go now?"

He was out the door before he wondered if perhaps the child had planned things this way. She _was_ her mother's daughter, after all.

\--

The streets where relatively quiet. Twilight was already casting a wide palette of colours across the sky. According to the Detective's briefing, most trick-or-treaters, the younger ones, would have gone earlier. With her daughter now approaching her teens, it was permissible to go a little later and avoid the crowds. 

The Spawn received compliments on her costume and gathered candy at every house. Some of the passing revellers complimented Lucifer, too, although he tried not to preen to much at their flattery. That would be unbecoming.

The child was quite capable of finding her way on her own and seemed to enjoy doing so. Lucifer kept watch from a distance while she roamed from house to house. This all worked quite well until, at a point near the end of their route, the girl broke into a run and disappeared from his sight around a corner.

Lucifer sped up too, letting his long legs carry him around the corner. He slowed down as soon as he caught sight of the scene there.

The girl hadn't tried to get away from him. Instead, she had run _toward_ danger. Three small children in costumes were huddled together behind her, while she faced two taller young men. Her adversaries were still children by today's standards, but old enough to be considered men in earlier times. A third young man stood a little off to the side. He held a frizzy-haired young woman who was wearing a black cloak with red and gold trim. A broken wand lay at her feet. From the expression on the young woman's face, she hadn't gotten into this situation by choice.

"I see you've found an oppressor to stand up to," Lucifer said to the Detective's daughter. "But.."

Before he could continue, one of the bullies – the biggest one -- turned away from her and faced Lucifer. The boy's eyes travelled across Lucifer's expensive suit, down to the mirror-shined shoes and back up to his wings. The faint glimmer of curiosity devolved into a contemptuous sneer. "Best to be getting along, _Angel_," he said in a mocking tone. He appeared to be aiming for a parody of Lucifer's accent. In aiming for Oxford Street, however, he'd missed and landed in the East End. "And take Lassie-lot with you." He stepped in closer, within Lucifer's personal space. "We won't even take her candy. Or pull any feathers from those pretty, pretty wings of yours."

Lucifer copied the top-to-toe assessment. The boy was dressed in what almost certainly was his regular football jersey, including all the padding, only without the helmet. He was tall, certainly. Almost tall enough to look Lucifer in the eye. And the padding gave him an impressively broad silhouette. But he wasn't quite there. Not a real threat. Just a bully, and nothing more than that. He could deal with bullies.

Lucifer's lack of reaction caused a frown. "I said get lost, you f-"

Lucifer raised his eyebrow and the footballer's insult petered out. The other two fellows -- one in a cheap plastic Batman mask without a cape and not otherwise dressed in black, and the other in a plaid shirt and with a cowboy hat -- both abandoned the children and came to join their friend. They were trying for equally threatening postures, but footballer was the tallest, so that wasn't helping them any.

"You know how many people have called me names?" Lucifer asked. He kept his voice low. Not overtly threatening, just aiming for an undertone of deferred menace. He took a deliberate step closer, forcing all three of the young men to take a step back or have to crane their heads to look at him.

Cowboy had the most courage. "Nobody?" he suggested. 

"Oh, no." That surprised the boys. Lucifer huffed a laugh. "Quite the opposite, in fact." He had the boys' attention. He took another step, putting himself between them and the other children. "I've been called so many names I've lost count. All of them more creative than yours, I should add. So if calling names is all you're going to do, you can keep doing it at _me_. Not those kids."

"Uh…" Batman found words first as all three of them tried to parse that. Even if his vocabulary remained rather limited.

Lucifer used the pause to clear the area of bystanders. "Beatrice, perhaps you had better take…" He finally placed the costume from the movies the Detective's Spawn had made him watch with her. "… Miss Granger and the children over to the next house." It wouldn't do to scare the _good_ kids, after all. 

"Will you be OK?"

The girl's concern was touching. "I will be fine, as ever." The young woman in the Hermione Granger costume had recovered the ruins of her wand and was gathering her charges. "Go on, general, lead your troops!"

Quarterback started making a move. Lucifer moved faster, unfurling one wing to intercept his movement. "Run out of names to call me already, have you?"

"T-There's three of us and only one of you," Cowboy started. Look at that, he could count. He must be the brains of the outfit.

"Yes, I know." Lucifer stretched his wings out, not coincidentally blocking the path to follow the Detective's daughter and the other children. Not that the boys could have followed. All three were staring at his fully extended wings with open-mouthed stares. "Hardly fair, but that’s what we've got. Unless you want to go and find some friends?" He shook his head. "Didn't think so. People who take candy from babies don't have any friends, do they?"

Quarterback swallowed. "We were just trick-or-treating, just like them," he managed to get out. He didn't sound too convinced himself.

"You were?" Didn't look like it, but a straight line was hard to resist. "Well, I suppose I can play along with that." Lucifer let his lips curl up into a toothy grin, and as he did so, permitted the fires of hell to light up in his eyes. "And I choose _trick_."

He had barely finished his sentence before all three boys were tripping over themselves to get away. They ran off. 

The rest of the children, were waiting for him at the next driveway. The young woman dressed as Hermione Granger thanked him profusely. She was a high-school senior, just like the three bullies. They had found out she'd offered to take her little brother and his friends out tonight, and had ambushed them. 

Lucifer waved off the thanks. He'd already had his fun. Also, while 'Miss Granger' and the Detective's daughter were relatively quiet and clean, the same could not be said for the younger children. They were _also_ grateful and physically and vocally demonstrative of the fact. Lucifer wanted to get out of there to save his suit and his ears.

That left him with Beatrice, walking back to the Detective's apartment, enjoying the peace and quiet of what was now almost full dark. "There is one thing we still have to discuss, child."

"I know, I shouldn't have run off. But they were bullying those kids! And you were close by, anyway"

"No, not that." Lucifer was quite sure the Detective would approve of her daughter's actions. If she ever found out. "This is about earlier this evening." He looked down sternly at the girl. "Now tell me honestly, child. You manipulated me into using my own wings as a costume, didn't you?" 

"Oh. Yes?" A pause. The girl was looking up at him sideways, with a worried expression. "Are you angry?"

"You could have just asked, you know."

"Would you have said yes?"

He probably wouldn’t have, at that. Flaunting his wings was something Lucifer hadn't even been _able_ to do for years, and then he had thought it a cruel joke played by his father. And now…. 

Well, they were useful. They were _tools_, not decoration. Even if they were decorative, too. But they were meant to be used; either to impress with their scale, as weapons for beating an opponent or, most obviously, for flight. Not to be carried around immobile and raised awkwardly in order to keep their pinions out of the dirt while he went around on foot playing chaperone to an eleven-year-old.

As weapons or for flight, Lucifer didn't like using his wings. They were both functions he'd had to use far too often and in ways he sometimes still shuddered to remember. But he did like showing off. And giving those bullies the scare they deserved had been fun. He sighed. "Let's say I'll pick three pieces of candy and we won't say any more about it."

"Deal!" The girl's worried expression had already dissipated. Instead, she wore a wide grin again. 

"What is that nickname your mother keeps using?"

"Trixie? Everybody uses that except you."

"The other one."

"Monkey?"

"Yes, that one." The Detective had been as perceptive as ever in her choice of terms of endearment. "You really can be a tricksy monkey sometimes."

"Hey!" That was all the protest he got. Instead, the girl's wide grin was now directed upward at him. "Does that mean you'll also start calling me Trixie?"

"Perhaps." Names had power, after all. And she had earned the power of that one.


End file.
